Painting

"Charlotte draws beautifully - in the summer she takes sketches of sea and land and sky; in the winter she draws from casts and is going to copy some of the great pictures in the Louvre" so Charlotte, Baroness Lionel de Rothschild (1819-1884) wrote of her cousin and namesake Charlotte (1825-1899), the wife of Nathaniel de Rothschild (1812-1870) in 1861.

It was not just family prejudice. Charlotte's delicate talent and great sensitivity earned he a place in Benezit's Dictionnaire des Peintres. She exhibited in the Paris Salon from 1864 and in London from 1879, many of her works were etched and she went on to co-found the French Society of Watercolourists.

Charlotte was not alone among the Rothschild women in taking a traditional accomplishment for young ladies to a high level of proficiency. Charlotte, Baroness Anselm (1807-1859), enjoyed painting enough to set the scene for a charming oil of herself and family in her studio.

In the modern era, Nica de Koenigswarter, née Rothschild (1913-1988), ‘The Jazz Baroness’ painted abstract pictures, and her daughter Kari is also an artist. Baronne Eric de Rothschild (b.1955), paints abstract works under the name Beatrice Carracciolo.

Anselm & Charlotte von Rothschild and their children and nurse by Charlotte